"You can be anything you want when you grow up!"
"Dream big!"
"The world is your oyster!"
Ahh, sweet adolescence. The ignorance of youth is quite possibly one of the world's greatest gifts. How I miss the days where the biggest stressor in my life was wondering if Goku was ever going to actually defeat Frieza (Seriously, a nineteen episode fight was not only excessive but just downright abusive). As kids, we always lived in the present and never worried about what life was going to throw at us. It was a time when the future was the last thing we thought about. In fact, we hardly ever thought about what we were going to do that day, let alone the next few years (Unless, of course, it was Monday and we knew Dragonball Z was going to be on). Sure, we all thought about what being an adult was going to be like, but it was only ever a fleeting idea. No one ever spent years of their youth contemplating what kind of career they were going to have. Mostly because we sort of already knew.
We were going to be whatever we wanted! The world was ours for the taking! Since birth, we have been told over and over again that we could be anything we wanted when we grew up.
Want to be an astronaut? Of course, you can, Billy!
Run a candy company? It's all yours, Sally!
Become a Super Saiyan defend the earth from evil? Well, technology is always advancing and aliens have to be out there, so why not, Victor??
Being a child meant seeing the world as an adult playground where one day we could do whatever we pleased. All we had to do was dream big, go through that puberty thing, and we'd be set. Awesome!
Then reality hit; not all at once, but it hit.
Slowly, we began to see what the world was really like.
First, we find out that Santa isn't real.
Then, Mark McGuire takes steroids.
You don't make the team you tried out for.
A friend's parents get divorced.
A loved one passes away.
Through increasingly significant events, we begin to see what the world is really like. It's not this bright and perfect place filled with sunshine and rainbows; it's cold, dark, and entirely indifferent to our existence. Becoming an adult means pulling back the veil and discovering that fairy tales don't exist.
Our heroes will lie to us.
"Love" is just a chemical imbalance that eventually fades.
No one lives forever.
With these abrupt doses of reality, we are molded and changed by the world around us. Gradually as we grow up, our dreams begin to grow up with us. We become nothing more than products of our brutally honest reality.
Billy becomes a state senator.
Sally becomes an engineer.
Victor becomes a no-name author.
Growing up isn't just about getting older, it's also about learning to make compromises. That's what the real world is all about; accepting what you cannot change and adapting as best you can to survive.
Kind of depressing, isn't it? It's hard to go from a master of the universe to that weird guy in the coffee shop who talks to himself. But this brings me to my main point. We cannot let our careers change who we are.
Billy may not be an astronaut, but his love of space can lead him to create a bill that gives NASA enough support to develop a mission to mars.
Sally may not run a confectionery, but she can still use candy's effects on the brain to help develop addiction cures.
Victor may not be the universe's greatest hero, but he can write his own story with a new hero that just might inspire the next generation of kids.
Just because you didn't become exactly who you wanted to doesn't mean you should ever give up on your dreams. Life is about compromise and adaptation. Exactly how you adapt, however, is completely up to you.
